Mobile

August 16, 2013

Draw a circle on a map around Shoreditch and
Soho. If you know people that live and work in it, you’ll be familiar with the
terms "Five Guys" and "Shake Shack" from your social media
feeds.

George Osborne goes to Byron. Everyone that
hates George Osborne, is currently calling judgement on the two rival -
authentic but slightly more expensive - burger chains. The tool of judgement is
the smartphone.

There's only one way to call who is winning the
war. Who is pulling in the largest volume of burger porn from its customers,
measured by Instagram and Vine posts?

July 22, 2013

What do you get if a cross a
Tory cabinet minister with a French new wave cinema starlet? Ordinarily a court
order – but in this instance, something thought provoking.

First, Jeremy Hunt – a man
not shy of a camera and a headline – has gone and done a Diana. The Health
Secretary has got himself a surgical gown, a pair of latex gloves and a freelance
photographer; and distributed images of himself working as a shift nurse in an
A&E unit. (Presumably not one of the 14
underperforming hospitals earmarked in last week’s review).

Hunt’s angle though is
admirable. How is he supposed to tackle thousands of complaints he receives over
citizens’ treatment in the hands of the NHS without working on the front line
himself? Cristina
Odone in the Telegraph makes the point crisply: “The only way to learn is
to do.” Correct (to a point).

Yes, we can learn by
experience. Another way to learn is to convert information into knowledge.

Astrid Berges-Frisbey
(pictured for reference) is the 27 year old French-Spanish actress and star of
Juliette. Juliette – according to The
Guardian – is the latest in a new wave of European films that depicts the
stories of life for young people living against a backdrop of austerity and
Eurozone meltdown.

The “grey-eyed and
chain-smoking” actress (presumably not Lambert & Butler) looked out of the
window wistfully and said, “We have more tools, more choices, and yet we live as if
constantly paralysed.” Spot on love, (I’d say if I were her agent or northern).

In
short, what she is hinting at is an argument being put forward by many others –
including Baroness
Greenfield. Her view is that our brains are beginning to function
differently. Our click-click, always
online, never satisfied information gathering is relentless, without allowing
it to pause, permeate and be converted into knowledge (in the way that
traditional education via reading and study, does). We sit smoking fags looking
out of windows flicking an iPhone pouring thousands of images into our brain,
but less and less of it is sinking in.

In short, what Hunt, Berges-Frisbey and
Greenfield are showing us is that we’d do well to recognise the difference
between information and intelligence. Getting a grip of Twitter and your RSS
feeds is all well and good – but what you do with it is what counts.

December 20, 2012

5 times a week I'll use the phrase 'Oh for fuck's sake." It's been eight months since I've done that and then felt compelled to write something on my blog with the same name. It's Instagram again.

I refer you to my April post, about Silicon Valley entrepreneurs' ingenuity at duping people who wear expensive trainers for their own commercial gain. This week, they've said they're going to sell photos of your kids to McDonalds, who'll in turn advertise Big Macs. That's what I've understood it to be anyway.

2. Your photo was rubbish. Instagram made it look nicer, so much so, that you felt compelled to share it with others. As far as I'm aware, you haven't paid them since you opened your account.

3. Instagram have been stupid. The more avid a user of social media you are, the greater your propensity to attention seek. So attention seekers (their core audience) pour through social T&Cs with the meticulousness of a Manhattan lawyer. They do it for their own benefit, not the crowd. I don't believe Facebook and Instagram want to sell pictures of my kids to Exxon, nor do I think lawyers will allow them to. If they can, who's the bell end for putting them there in the first place? Howevere, if they want to sell pictures of my uncooked ribeyes or empty espresso cups, that's a fair deal for me.

4. If you don't like it, vote with your feet. Go to Flickr's new app or the next photo sharing network you've yet to hear of. They'll end up doing the same thing to you.

October 15, 2011

Ever so slightly nauseated this week by The Guardian's decision to publish its newslist. "You can help us make the news." "Have your say." All that bullshit. It's the sort of move that grants some swooning at a Haymarket conference with words like "progressive," "open" and "bold experiment," bandied around.

I love The Guardian and its variety of digital and paper products. I'm 38 years old, work in something media related and crucially, know who Korn are. On that basis, it's the only paper I'm allowed to buy. The only downside to The Guardian unfortunately is that for all its cleverness - the bastard hemorrhages money.

If you want to make money one day (retain readership, properly monetise that large global audience etc) don't cheapen the product. Handing the editorship of the paper over to bored people in train carriages with smartphones seems counter to what you ought to be paying for. I'd like to hand my money over to an editor, who selects some great writing and presents it to me in a nice typeface on a couple of screens and on paper. I'm not giving it to the bloke sat next to me.

October 25, 2010

February 2, 1983. My 10th birthday and arguably the greatest birthday present of my life. My parents - still freshly divorced - knew they had to make Christmas and birthday count. The early to mid 80s boom in consumer spending allied to a messy separation was the perfect storm.

And so it was, I unwrapped the paper, genuinely oblivious to what lay beneath. The paper peeled back and a silver and blue box marked Panasonic winked at me. Inside, the main body of the product was hugged by a pair of headphones with blue foam. I hadn't asked for it - but my parents had second guessed me. I opened it up and inserted the Ever Ready batteries. We had a student lodger - Nick Carter, 9 years my senior. He handed me a TDK - C90 of Duran Duran's 'Rio,' nodded sagely, and said, "try this."

September 18, 2009

Here's an opportunity to give yourself a break filling your "packed" schedule of procrastination at conferences and seminars. Just watch this, and then go and do some real client work in social media for 6 months. It's all you need. They'll be another one in the spring.

Channel 4 and Endemol deserve nothing but respect for devising a format that is commercially stupendous, and still looks ahead of its time, (even if the content it produces has become just a little predictable). Its simplicity is everything. Stick some people in a box, peer at them via your TV, mobile, computer or tabloid newspaper and then persuade people to spend more money sending texts, making calls, buying the sponsor's products. People do.

Endemol CEO Tim Hincks says Big Brother "is the only really
convincing multiplatform idea and format in the UK". He could add the world - the format has been exported to over 70 countries. In reality, there are shit loads of them - but Hincks' people showed them the path to gold.

Can't wait to see the back of it myself. And that's nothing but pure jealousy.